Comment by gman1679

Comment by gman1679

Comment by theholychicken

I would like to note that you CANNOT stack several glyphs of the same type to increase the effect. Upon attempting to inscribe a duplicate Glyph at the Lexicon of Power you recieve the message:

"That Glyph is already inscribed in your spellbook."

Comment by Findorn

Quick Theory crafting for a Afflic Warlock. Lets assume that 50% of your time is spent casting Shadow Bolt and 50% reapplying Dots. Depending on the fight and such things as if you have CoA or CoE this can vary.

So 30 seconds every minutes are spent casting Shadow Bolt. That is around 12 if you have the talent to reduce the cast time to 2.5 seconds.

That is 1.2 Shadow bolts in mana every minutes.

Over a 5 minute fight that is the mana for 6 shadow bolts. Assuming you end with 0 mana you just received an extra 6 shadow bolts from not casting Life Tap/Dark Pact. Lets also say your Shadow Bolts hit for 2000 damage

6x2000 damage=12000 damage in a fight.

300 seconds in 5 minutes12000 extra damage.

That is roughly 40 extra DPS from not Life Taping. That will go up and down depending on how often you update your DoTs and your shadowbolt damage. Let me know if my math is wrong.

Edit: Just thought. If you are afflic you have Nightfall. And if you have The Corruption Glyph too that is 8% chance of Corruption tick to get free SB.

Assuming you always have it up you get 20 ticks. That means you should get 1.6 shadow bolts in a minute. That means you save an additional 16% mana of a shadowbolt every minutes. So your original 1.2 Shadow Bolts Mana becomes 1.36 Shadow Bolts. Or 6.8 Shadow Bolts every 5 minutes.

6.8x2000 Damage= 13600 damage in a fight.

13600/300=45.3

So if you have Corruption Glyph and Nightfall you will see an even bigger bonus (5 DPSish) versus the glyph by its self.

Comment by Quest

I can, with good certainty, say that anyone that doesnt see the use in a glyph like this (for any class), and mentions lifetap (or x ability that seems to negate the usefullness of), doesnt have a optimal rotation going in a PvE setting.

Comment by ezet

You've forgotten to compare casting 6 shadowbolts without lifetapping with the alternative thou, which would be casting one lifetap and then 5 shadowbolts within the same timeframe. So the difference in DPS would be, at most, 1 shadowbolt. Normally it would be less unless the target dies within the 1.5 seconds longer it will take to cast the 6th SB after lifetapping.

In a raid environment you would have to cast 80+ (roughly) shadowbolts to gain 1.5seconds of lifetapping. Assuming 2000 damage per bolt, 1.5 seconds of casting is 2000*0,6 = 1200 damage. Continuing with your assumption of 12 shadowbolts per minute, that's a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds to gain 1200 damage, roughly 3 dps.

This glyph is not worth it in a raiding environment, as there are 3+ that are better.

Comment by Punkyd

Here is some fact.

First of all this glyph is useless (in term of dps) in any fight that you would not, otherwise, get oom.

Second, this glyph just does the same thing as any mana regain spell such as Drak Pact but saving you the global cooldown from that spell. So here's some maths:

I am a lvl 80 affliction lock with 1633 SP (with fel armor on) and 356 spirit.Last rank of shadow bolt cost 655 mana so this glyph is a save of 65.5 mana for each cast of shadow bolt.Dark Pact gives me 2645 mana at the cost of a GCD, so that means I save 1.5 sec every 2645/65.5 = 40.4 shadow bolts. Having a cast time of about 2.3 sec of Shadow bolt (talent + haste) this means I would save 1.5 sec for every about 93 sec of costant shadow bolt casting. Now this may or may not give me time to fire 1 more shadow bolt wich does 2497 dmg for a dps of 2497/(93 + 2.3)s = 26.2 dps (this is assuming you're only casting this spell so its a upper limit) but with the assumption that your casting fire bolt only half of the time this should be reduced by 2.

Now, since we can't be sure that after 93 sec we DO have time to cast this bolt (we only saved 1.5 sec) lets take a common multiple. For 3 Dark Pact (4.5 sec) I can cast 2 Shodow Bolt (4.6 sec) close enough. So we have : 3 * 2645 mana / 65.5 mana = 121.1 shadow bolts. That the number of bolts you need to save the almost the exact mana of 3 dark pact. So again 121 * 2.3 sec = 278.3 sec = 4 min 38 sec. So this glyph allow you to fire 2 more shadow bolt every 4 min 38 sec since it would save you from using dark pact 3 times.

DPS = (2 * 2497 dmg) / (278.3 + 2.3 + 2.3) sec = 17.65 dps again that a upper limit, and you should get more like 8 or 9 since you won't just cast shadow bolt.

Comment by anthonypants

Warlocks who don't know what you're doing and are scared by math:Get this glyph.

All other warlocks:Get this glyph.

Comment by darlissa

seriously i would preffer a "+ 5% increased damage on shadowbolt" (comparing to mage glyphs which are indeed awesome it could have been possible for locks to get a similar one) or even a "+5% crit to shadowbolt", even "+5% critical damage to shadowbolt" in the worst case..

even if some of you guys tend to say that each lifetap we cast takes away some of our dps, almost all the fights in tbc/wrath give u an oportunity to lifetap without loosing any of your dps (think: illidan phase changes, al'ar moving to his landing spots or kil'jaeden moving around the room towards bubble and back etc) and even at fights like patchwerk/brutallus, i would totally preffer to lifetap and keep my mana up before a heroism/bloodlust and then i know that when i hit my "IWIN" button, i destroy things around me..

further, u will never run oom at trash in raids or in 5men in almost any instance ever made considering u entered combat with (almost) full mana so i doubt anyone would preffer to spend less time drinking between packs instead of pwning trash faster and topping dmg meter with a better burst and ofc tapping/drinking abit more afterwards

instead of typing here how awesome this glyph is, i would rather focus on finishing a boss with no more than 10% mana (which means i did not lifetap more than i should = lifetap didnt take too much of my dps and too much of healers' mana)

the overall point is that this glyph could only be worth, so that u could notice its presence in dmg meters, when u fight looooong fights with no environment problems that involve moving around or pausing dps, that means staying still and spamming. even in those situations (patchwerk only atm) a +dmg glyph would do almost the same if not more.. think about tbc lock spec, its the same thing as u would use fel energy instead of touch of shadow

Comment by Kral

It's an extremely bad glyph (it's almost the worst of the warlock DPS glyphs), and should definitely not be used for raiding. Check Elitist Jerks if you don't want to believe.

This is often ground for skill at 165 inscription so I can only think comments explaining that it's a bad glyph getting marked down was done by scribes trying to sell their leftovers.

Comment by anthonypants

You're absolutely right. Did this glyph do something other than less mana at some point in time? I don't know why I would suggest this.

Comment by greentea

A conservative estimate for lifetap is 3500 mana; thus you will get one lifetap saved per 53 shadowbolts.One shadowbolt is 1 and 2/3 lifetap at any level of haste,So you get one "free" shadowbolt per 88; that's about 1.1%effective haste to your shadowbolts.

This could work out much better, or much worse, because you can't cast fractions of spells.

Anyways, EJ pegs this as one of the worst dps glyphs, and nomatter what spec you are, there are at least 3 better ones

Comment by IsaacX28

With the new Life Tap glyph coming in 3.1 Life tapping might not be so bad to have in your rodation ;)

Comment by Groundlord

Damn, looks like the 'Locks got shafted with Major glyphs too.

Comment by Raticulin

From my point of view, this glyph is useful for low level warlocks who are destro (as my alt). This one + Cataclysm makes your mana to stay for longer

Comment by artyfarty

The new MoP glyph is awesome! I've always dreamed about something like THAT shadowbolt volley from that Prophet Tharon'ja fight!

Comment by demonlock666

This Glyph is changed in MoP and now splits your Shadow Bolt in to three parts.The Three Shadow Bolts do damage as One Normal Shadow Bolt. If there are more then One targets in front of the Caster, One Shadow Bolt will go at one target, and the other will go at another target but doing less Damage then a normal Shadow Bolt.

Comment by guatafu

This is a potential dps gain. You have a chance for each "mini-bolt" to critically hit.For multi-target it's possibly unadviseable to use this if you're trying to burst a specific target.

Comment by Kanariya

Currently in beta, aside from splitting your Shadow Bolts into 3s, it's also using the original Shadow Bolt visual spell effect instead of the one introduced in Patch 4.3.

Comment by kirby40

Three Shadow Bolts, to be exact. And ixnay on the wishing for more Shadow Bolts. That's all. Three. Uno, dos, tres. No substitutions, exchanges or refunds.

Comment by McLockhart

As of 5.0.4 this glyph has become a minor glyph. The big change is obviously, as the glyph states, that your Shadow Bolt becomes split into three smaller bolts. They are all unleashed at the same time once Shadow Bolt has finished its cast. The smaller bolts then strikes the target over a very small period of time (0.5 to 1 second or so)

The big thing about this glyph, however, is the fact that the individual Shadow Bolts can critically hit, regardless of the other two. Each of the small bolts behave like a spell themselves. This means that each individual bolt may trigger a trinket (such as Harmlight Token from Twilight Highlands) On a personal note I can report that I've seen an increase in my various procs from trinkets since I've started to use this glyph

Comment by kgurnhill

the Smaller Shadow Bolts can Crit individually :)

Comment by JalleFr

I read comments about the three bolts being able to crit individually.. Does that mean they can also miss individually?Like you crit one, hit one, and miss one. Would that be possible?

Comment by Watslock

For the first I have to apologise for my English- it's not my native.

Today I've made a test. Spammed SB on Target Dummy.2 full pools of mana with glyph and 2 w/oNo demon but with Wildimps